Dr Peter Jensen…expressed his profound disappointment yesterday with Labor’s endorsement of gay marriage at the weekend.

”This is not a matter of equality, but of trying to force respect by changing the definition of one of the fundamentals of our society,” he said. ”I hope MPs will use the conscience vote to send a powerful signal of support for the integrity and true meaning of marriage.”

While the condemnation from many senior religious leaders to the party’s decision has been near universal, in this fight not all of their faith communities could be in their corner.

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There must never be social or political discrimination against any human being. There must be legal protection for same-sex couples to ensure appropriate justice in areas like property, inheritance, personal access, and so on.

But a same-sex union is not marriage, and can never be. Marriage is a vowed union of a man and a woman in a love from which human life can spring. A same-sex union is clearly not that, so this term marriage cannot be applied.

No other society in history has ever understood matter otherwise. The family as the basic unit of society is too precious for marriage and same-sex union to be equated.

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Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, Archbishop John Hepworth, will only be accepted as a layperson if he is to reconcile with the Catholic Church, reports the Australian.

Archbishop Hepworth has been notified by the Catholic Church that his bid to reunify the TAC with Rome has been successful, but his own case is conditional.

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We are living longer than ever, but being indigenous, single or divorced or living outside a city increases your chance of an early death.

The latest life tables from the Bureau of Statistics show an Australian girl born today can expect to live until 84, and even longer if she survives her relatively dangerous first year. An indigenous Australian girl can expect 10 years less. A boy born today can expect 79 years; an indigenous boy 11 years less.

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I would suggest that the conversation in ethnically diverse and cosmopolitan cities such as London – and to a lesser extent Sydney and Melbourne – needs to move beyond advocating working “side-by-side,” and instead should discuss what it means to be part of a robust civil society within which religious groups undertake shared political action in pursuit of goods in common – not to mention where such action may well involve conflict with the priorities and policies of government and business corporations in pursuit of a critical yet constructive relationship with both.

Real encounter, dialogue and understanding is, I would suggest, best generated as a by-product of shared civic action, because in such shared civic action the focus is neither on face-to-face encounter nor even on simply working side-by-side.

Rather, the focus is rightly on the pursuit and protection of goods in common – or, to put it another way, it is through the relationships that emerge between people of different faiths and none, as they identify and uphold the things they love and hold dear, that something genuinely worthwhile emerges.

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Church abuse is the chief obstacle to Australians believing in Christianity, according to a national online survey of more than 1000 people conducted by a Christian media group.

The Australian Communities Report said more than three-quarters of respondents, 76%, said church abuse was a “massive” or “significant” negative influence on their attitudes towards Christianity and church.

It said the top 10 “belief blockers” for Christianity were church abuse, hypocrisy, “judging others”, religious wars, suffering, issues around money, that it was “outdated”, Hell and condemnation, homosexuality and exclusivity.

The report also found that doctrines and practices about homosexuality were a “block” to belief for 69% of respondents, while those on Hell and condemnation (66%), the role of women (60%), suffering (60%) and science and evolution (57%) were also prominent obstacles.

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President Obama announced Wednesday that the United States planned to deploy 2,500 Marines in Australia to shore up alliances in Asia, but the move prompted a sharp response from Beijing, which accused Mr. Obama of escalating military tensions in the region.

The agreement with Australia amounts to the first long-term expansion of the American military’s presence in the Pacific since the end of the Vietnam War. It comes despite budget cuts facing the Pentagon and an increasingly worried reaction from Chinese leaders, who have argued that the United States is seeking to encircle China militarily and economically.

“It may not be quite appropriate to intensify and expand military alliances and may not be in the interest of countries within this region,” Liu Weimin, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in response to the announcement by Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia.

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Two of the oldest churches at Rose Bay will be demolished to make way for residential flats and a new childcare centre.

Plans from the Greek Orthodox Church to tear down the former St Paul’s Anglican Church, as well as the parish hall and two neighbouring houses, were given the green light in a tight vote at a Joint Regional Planning Panel meeting on Thursday.

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Catholics and Anglicans gathered at St John’s Cathedral, Brisbane, on November 10 for the annual service of Prayer for Reconciliation for the Brisbane and Toowoomba dioceses of the two Churches.

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The Anglican Church of Australia’s Very Reverend Peter Catt says a same-sex marriage Bill would not deny or denigrate the legitimacy of marriage.

Addressing the parliamentary hearing on same-sex marriage on behalf of the church’s social responsibilities committee, Dr Catt said civil unions instead extended the liberties of same or opposite-sex couples.

“I really don’t see that this impinges on marriage at all,” he said.

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A prominent Brisbane church leader has backed the state government’s plan to legalise same-sex unions.

Dr Peter Catt, the Dean of St Johns Anglican Cathedral in Brisbane, says the legislation introduced into Queensland parliament last night is “good law-making for a pluralistic society”.

“It removes discrimination and affords equal rights to same-sex couples,” Dr Catt said in a statement.

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Max Schrems wasn’t sure what he would get when he asked Facebook to send him a record of his personal data from three years of using the site.

What the 24-year-old Austrian law student didn’t expect, though, was 1222 pages of data on a CD. It included chats he had deleted more than a year ago, “pokes” dating back to 2008, invitations to which he had never responded, let alone attended, and hundreds of other details.

Time for an “aha” moment.

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JENNIFER RICE: It would enable relationships to be registered. So it would give them some official capacity, some recognition, something beyond a de facto relationship. In terms of rights that attach with that, that may have a flow-on effect in terms of government benefits and recognition, but again that would depend on the recognition that the Commonwealth gave to the registration.

MATT WORDSWORTH: The bill is being introduced by the Deputy Premier and Treasurer, Andrew Fraser.

It was discussed at caucus yesterday and it was agreed that a conscience vote would be allowed. The Leader of the House, Labor MP, Judy Spence, moved to fast track the bill through Parliament.

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Australia and America are quite different: our origins, our founding stories, our patterns of migration, our relationship with Europe.

America’s practice of choice and competition in religion couldn’t be more different from Australia, where pretty much everyone was either a rock-chopper or a proddy dog for the first 150 years of our history.

But, if God is back in the rest of the world, is God coming back in Australia? In many ways, yes.

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The traditional model for the mourning of the dead has been set in concrete for millennia. The Anglican model was described 250 years ago in Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Here he describes death in a small village community where the burial ground is at the centre of village life and where every death has meaning for the community. Ceremonies honed by time helped family members and the community to acknowledge the death and start the process of recovery.

Fast forward a quarter of a millennium and the shape of society is so different. Our communities are huge and contain unknowable amounts of people whose lives and deaths are inconsequential to us. We couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss about the thousands of Australians who die weekly. As the life expectancy has rocked up into the eighties, most of us who die in the affluent west will do so at a great age in care, invisible to the outside world. We have become less practised at mourning (which is not bad thing). This deskilling of ritual and mourning has been exacerbated as faith has moved from the centre of Australian life. So death is now less frequent and less mourned, for the death of the aged inspires far less grief than the death of the young and the old rituals are now forgotten and seldom rehearsed.

There is a ritualistic vacuum that calls forth both uncertainty and innovation.

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Newcastle Anglican Bishop Brian Farran is calling for major reforms to the New South Wales prison system, saying the imprisonment rate is unacceptably high.

He will raise the issue in his opening address at the 50th Synod of the Anglican Diocese, which gets underway at Maitland Town Hall this morning.

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Parents should be able to choose the sex of any babies after their first child to ”gender balance” their family, says a leading Sydney obstetrician.

The head of women’s and children’s health at the University of NSW, Professor Michael Chapman, says Australians are more concerned about achieving a desired ratio of girls to boys in their families than wanting first-born sons.

”In this country it’s more about gender balance than selecting the sex of one child,” he said.

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It is helpful to set reflection on Catholic pastoral strategy in a larger context. The situation in Australia, as indeed more generally in the West, is not specific to the Australian Catholic Church. It is shared with other mainstream churches. It also characterises other voluntary groups in society, such as political parties and service groups.

Most churches are ageing and diminishing in numbers. They struggle to communicate an understanding of church beliefs to their children or to win them to church allegiance. As a result those with a strong understanding of faith are elderly. Ministers within churches are also fewer and ageing.

The diminishing number of clergy and of well-grounded church members puts pressure on outreach to needy groups and on the churches’voice in society. The call on resources means that there are fewer ministers available for full time grass roots involvement in hospitals, prisons, schools and so on.

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The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney has come out in strong support of the proposed poker machine reforms, warning that the penetration of gambling culture into sport and media ”bodes ill for the future of sport in this country”.

The Reverend Peter Jensen used his opening presidential address at the 49th Synod of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney to commend the federal government for its ”moral leadership” on problem gambling as it seeks to introduce mandatory precommitment technology on poker machines.

In his first public statement on the issue, Dr Jensen took aim at sporting associations that create cultural capital ”funded by the real capital of addicts”.

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The push to recognise sharia law in Australia has entered an ambitious new phase that draws on the tactics that have handed success to Islamists in Britain.

The latest move, under the guise of helping Muslim women, would give sharia law priority over Australian divorce law.

If enacted, this plan would prevent Muslims from obtaining a civil divorce unless they first divorce under Islamic law.

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The future of Christchurch’s earthquake-wrecked Anglican and Catholic cathedrals is even more uncertain after the decision by the largest insurer of New Zealand churches and heritage buildings to stop offering earthquake cover.

British-owned Ansvar Insurance took a $700m hit in the earthquakes, including losses on both cathedrals and the Christchurch Arts Centre.

Its decision is a new complication for local church authorities.

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Complaints by devotees of the new atheism in Australia have beaten back the Lord’s Prayer from the public square. A primary school in Perth’s northern suburbs has ended the reciting of the Lord’s Prayer before school assemblies after some parents complained that it violated the law by promoting religious belief over non-belief.

On 20 September, Edgewater Primary School principal Julie Tombs wrote to parents announcing the cessation of prayers after 25 years, after a survey of parents indicated that some were opposed to the practice.

“We acknowledge that of the parents who did respond to the survey, many wanted to retain the Lord’s Prayer and it is right that we continue to recite it at culturally appropriate times such as Christmas and Easter, as part of our educational programme,” Mrs Tombs said in a statement.

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Australian Anglicans are being invited to commemorate Defence Sunday on 6 November.

The day, which is held annually on the Sunday nearest to Remembrance Day (11 November), is intended to draw attention to the spiritual needs and wellbeing of those who serve in the Australian Defence Force and to foster prayerful support within the Church for those who serve in the ADF.

It is also designed to encourage clergy to consider service as full- or part-time ADF chaplains and to nurture cooperation between the ADF and Anglican dioceses and parishes across Australia.

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New Zealand’s largest insurer of churches and heritage buildings announced yesterday that it would stop offering earthquake coverage throughout the country.

The British-owned Ansvar Insurance suffered $700 million worth of losses in the Christchurch earthquakes, including losses on the Anglican and Catholic cathedrals and the Christchurch Arts Centre.

It is the first insurer to stop offering earthquake coverage nationally since the disasters, which are expected to cost insurers more than $15 billion.

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[Principal Chris] Duncan said he normally wrote an 800-word article on education or school issues, but he was prompted to take a different approach after having to help a 16-year-old student who suffered serious abuse on Facebook.

“It was one of those reflex actions,” he said.

“I put it [the newsletter] out and thought this is going to offend half of the school community, but the feedback I’ve had is overwhelmingly positive.”

Mr Duncan said he was aware of students who had been sent into an “appalling state” due to abuse they received on Facebook, with some children being more vulnerable than others.

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Australian Church leaders have urged MPs to put the needs of children first and reject proposals to amend the country’s Marriage Act to allow same-sex marriages.

Last week over 50 senior Anglican, Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant church leaders gave their backing to Revising Marriage?, a paper prepared by the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) and distributed to all MPs that defended the traditional view of marriage as being between one man and one woman.

“The traditional concept of marriage has a place in the law for the purpose of supporting the exclusivity and faithfulness of those biological relationships that result in children,” the paper argued. “Marriage in the law is for the sake of children and society,” the ACL paper stated and should not be changed to “primarily serve the interests of adults.”

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…this is my theme tonight: how did we get to the point where it seems entirely natural for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to describe political journalists appearing on its air as “the insiders?” Don’t you think that’s a little strange? I do. Promoting journalists as insiders in front of the outsiders, the viewers, the electorate”¦. this is a clue to what’s broken about political coverage in the U.S. and Australia. Here’s how I would summarize it: Things are out of alignment. Journalists are identifying with the wrong people. Therefore the kind of work they are doing is not as useful as we need it to be.

Part of the problem was identified by Lindsay Tanner in his book, Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy. He points out how often the Australian press reframes politics as entertainment, seizing on trivial episodes that amuse or titillate and then blowing them up until they start to seem important. I’m not going to dwell on this because Tanner has it well covered. So did my mentor in graduate school, Neil Postman, in his 1985 classic, Amusing Ourselves to Death.

From a TV programmer’s point of view the advantage of politics-as-entertainment is that the main characters, the politicians themselves, work for free! The media doesn’t have to pay them because taxpayers do. The sets are provided by the government, the plots by the party leaders, back benchers and spin doctors. Politics as problem-solving or consensus-building would be more expensive to cover. Politics as entertainment is simply a low cost alternative.

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Hagelin finished with classic Billy Graham-type exhortations to ”commit with me to this battle for God’s best today . . . to testify that God’s design for marriage is perfect, to show that marriage under any other definition is a lie . . . Will you . . . stand for marriage?”

And there you have it. It’s all there in a couple of sentences: the presumption of personal access to God’s will, the vilification of any other take on that and the arrogated right to impose that judgment not just on your own life, but universally.

It’s an elision to do any dictator proud. The logic goes like this: I’m right. Not just right for me, but right, period. You are therefore wrong, period. So you must do what I believe to be right, because anything else amounts to an attack by you on my command of divine truth, and therefore on God.

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Philosophers, scientists and theologians have sought to define the relationship between faith and science (somewhat unsuccessfully) since the earliest of times. Emerging biotechnologies of the 21st century serve to further demonstrate the complex, and unavoidable, interplay between science, faith and ethics. The issues emerging from the advent of reproductive technologies, stem cell therapies and genetic engineering technologies, for example, are not trivial, and are issues faced
increasingly by members of our congregations and society in general. The challenge of pastoral leadership lies in both discerning the times in which we live and providing guidance rooted in sound scholarship and faith. Our conference this year thus seeks to explore the challenges of ministering in a scientific world, and the theological, social and ethical issues relevant to such an enterprise.

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One can certainly share the sense of frustration and, indeed, quite patent anger and irritation of the Irish Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, in his recent criticisms of the Vatican. In the face of overwhelming evidence of sexual and physical abuse by clergy, religious and Catholic institutions in Ireland, the Vatican seems reluctant to accept its share of responsibility. It also seems unwilling to co-operate without reservations with the Irish government’s proposals to prevent such abuse in future.

The most startling new measure in a system of mandatory reporting is the obligation for priests to violate the sanctity of the “sacramental seal” of Confession when a paedophile reveals that he or she has been involved in such activities. Senator Nick Xenophon has proposed a similar measure for Australia.

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